


Machine

by renquise



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, cryptography geekery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a little larger than a typewriter, set into a plain wooden box.  Two sets of letters, one made of keys, and the other of lights—he presses one of the keys, and another letter at the top lights up, a rotor inside the box clicking forward.  Deceptively simple, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Someday, I'd like to write something more for the Enigma decryption efforts, because holy crap this does not do it justice, but this'll do for now.

The first time England sees the machine, he thinks it’s very much like Germany himself: ordered, rational, and now, dangerous. It’s a little larger than a typewriter, set into a plain wooden box. Two sets of letters, one made of keys, and the other of lights—he presses one of the keys, and another letter at the top lights up, a rotor inside the box clicking forward. Deceptively simple, really.

The man from the codes department tells him that the man who made it called it “Enigma,” which strikes him as slightly over-dramatic, but it’s fairly accurate.

It’s a surprise when Poland calls him and France, asking them to meet him. England accompanies the men from the cryptology department in between the preparations for—England can’t bring himself to call it war, yet. He’s seen it coming, everyone’s seen it coming, but maybe they can all avert this somehow. God knows they’re all still tired, the cold curl of depression still lingering in his belly. It’s hard to gloss over the Great War, and he feels old and bitter, worn down. The prospect of another war isn’t doing much for his faith in humanity, really.

It’s a remote place in the Kabaty Woods, far removed from anything. The main meeting had been in Warsaw, with little of the pomp and circumstance that was usually required of diplomatic visits, but Poland had insisted on taking them to see this. England sighs. His feet are tired.

Poland pouts and shoves folders full of paper at them across the table.

England blinks. “What’s all this, Poland?” He pulls the massive collection of paper towards him, rifling through them. Pages and pages of jumbled five-letter groups, stretching hopelessly down the page, the same frustrating mess that he gets when trying to eavesdrop on Germany. But after that, there are—

“My god, Poland, are you saying that you’ve broken it? How in the world did you possibly—“

One of the men from the cryptology department, Knox, leans forward, eyes intent. “The connections in the entry drum. What—what are they.”

The man introduced as Rejewski gives a rueful smile. “Alphabetical,” he says, his accent thick.

Knox fixes him with an unbelieving look that quickly shifts to an incredulous laugh when Rejewski shrugs sympathetically, still smiling tiredly.

Poland shifts on his feet restlessly, not meeting England’s eyes. “Okay, so that jerk Germany is doing things that I, like, think are totally uncool. I mean, I can totally stop him, but it’s kinda complicated now. So I’m giving this stuff to you, and you better do something with it, ‘cuz that was a lot of work.” He scratches at the bandages covering his arm.

The room is filled with an endless steady ticking, clicking off possibilities like clockwork. Poland gestures at the room and its methodical chaos of machines and paper. “Isn’t it awesome? I mean, Germany’s puny little codes totally can’t stand against this, nuh-uh.” Even at the brink of invasion, borders unstable and precarious, Poland is glowing with pride. And rightly so—England can’t make a snappy remark come to his tongue. The base of operations is basic, held together with spit and sheer determination, but the implications of the knowledge stored in this besieged hideout are staggering. France is silent beside him, as well, glancing through the sheets of decrypts, his eyebrows climbing higher and higher on his face.

“Mon dieu, I’d never thought that information I’d given you could be of any use.”

Rejewski and Knox are surrounded by a steady, almost frantic stream of talking, the interpreters fumbling to keep up with their discussion. There’s electricity in the air, a heady sense of intellectual excitement and discovery, though a frantic undercurrent pulses underneath because there’s too little time, too little time.

Poland flips his hair over his shoulder and smirks at him. “D’you know what we called them?” he says, indicating the ticking machines with a desultory wave. “C’mon, you have to, like, guess.”

Finally glancing up from the decrypts, France smirks teasingly. “Oh, Poland, you didn’t name them after ponies, did you?” He sighs. “You’ve always been lacking in a sense of drama.”

“Well, I suggested it, but…” Poland mutters, looking to the side. “Anyways, they’re bombys.” He smirks, repeating the word as if tasting it on his tongue. “Yeah, bombys.”

There’s a shiver down England’s spine at that, because it suddenly sinks in that this mass of paper and steel is nothing less than a weapon.

They leave with an Enigma replica and information, though France hands most of the precious materials off to him, saying that there is no romance in all these numbers and mechanics. England can’t help but notice the tension in France’s jaw, the way his obnoxiously fluid movements are now abrupt and strained. He would laugh, taunt, but he has no appetite for it now, strangely. France shakes England’s hand curtly, not even trying for a kiss, and he’s off in a sweep of tailored coat to another meeting. It’s not funny at all, somehow.

The boys at GS&CS take over, more than eager to get their hands on this information, and he doesn’t think much more of it, too busy running around and trying to negotiate and somehow avert all of this.

Five weeks later, the phone wakes him up in the middle of the night, and England feels a leaden weight settle in the pit of his stomach as an aide informs him of the invasion of Poland’s territory.

He gets up, puts the kettle on the stove, and makes himself a cup of tea, watching the sun rise outside his window. The fog outside is quickly burned away by the sun, the day clear and stark.

 

He stumbles back from the war front in France with a bone-deep weariness settling into his body. It feels good to be back on his own soil, that sense of connection seeping back into his skin; with it, though, comes the aches of the bombings and the fears of his people, the dull throb of pain from the bandaged burns on his back.

In this mess, he’s lost track of exactly where France is—some say they’ve seen him down in the maquis, fighting alongside the resistance, but he’s sure he’d seen Germany dragging him off as England lay in the mud, waiting for his vision to clear and his limbs to start functioning again. Of course the bastard would go and get himself lost.

Bletchley Park is strange after the battlefront. It’s only a little way from London, and yet, wandering across the lawns, England could almost convince himself that he’s just at the manor for a weekend, about to dress for supper and then retire to the sitting room for brandy. There’s a game of croquet setting up outside, an enthusiastic discussion surrounding the rules. It feels like a secret.

It’s a motley assortment of people, really. England recognizes a few of the GS&CS staff that have been around for ages, but there are also so many young faces, doubtless straight out of their studies.

He blinks a little when one of the men tells him that he came here by winning a crossword competition. But after all, why not?

Turing, in particular, is a strange man, prone to fits of melancholy, but brilliant, completely brilliant. He’s never had much of a head for maths himself, can’t quite grasp the intricacies of what they are doing here, but by god, he knows that this is amazing. When the Colossus is revealed to him—and by god, did they ever name that right, the hulking, clattering beast of gears and metal residing in its own building—he almost laughs.

A machine to fight a machine. Of course.

It’s like those crazy suggestions America always pulls out at meetings, giant metal robots with lasers and glowing eyes, but this is both simpler and infinitely more complicated.

The cribs, England reflects, only work because someone out there is being careless, is making mistakes. In theory, Germany is right – if everyone did their job perfectly, mechanically, the Enigma is unassailable, the cold rationality of its encoding unbreakable. But operators are fallible, all too human, and mistakes, carelessness, happen all too easily on the battlefield. Things start repeating, operators don’t bother to change their keys, and the weather reports always start the same way.

Then again, what was it one of the boys had said? “The orderly teutonic mind is especially suited for devising schemes which any child could unravel.” England snorts to himself. Orderliness was in itself a form of carelessness, perhaps.

Either way, the weather reports for northern France suddenly look a lot more interesting.

Sometimes, coming back from Bletchley Park, it seems like everything is a hidden code and England finds himself searching for patterns in the clatter of gunfire, the distant booming, as if it’s all a giant key indicating how to unravel this mess. He hasn’t seen a glimpse of France yet, not sure if he’s been hiding with the resistance, or if he’s trapped under Germany’s influence in the Vichy. He finds a moment to tune into the BBC’s nightly broadcast out on the field, trying to push forward into occupied France, faintly surprised to hear the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth opening the broadcast. He hums it under his breath. Dah-dah-dah-daah. Dot-dot-dot-dash. V—V for Victory. V for Victory. He repeats it to himself as night sets.

 

When the war is over, there’s still so much to sort out, wariness sunk deep in their relations. Mistrust is simply a fact of war, one that he has to accept, especially when it comes to Ultra—really, if Germany had gotten even the vaguest idea that his codes had been broken—he doesn’t even want to consider that bleak possibility. It had been for the good of everyone to keep this all under wraps. America had felt horribly left out, but what can you do, really? Even when he had come to England, glowing with pride at the way his own codebreakers had unravelled Japan’s codes – Purple and Red and all those color-codes—England couldn’t bring himself to share anything, paralyzed by the overhanging shadow of possibilities.

In the end, they do what they have to do—the Colossus is broken down to pieces, the plans destroyed, the staff sworn to secrecy. He can see the tight-lipped look of some of the staff as the Colossus is buried, can feel them wanting to protest. England bites back the observation that it’s only a machine, because if there’s something he’s learned recently, it’s that there’s no such thing as “just a machine.” He knows that there’s so much more to a machine than steel and gears—there’s sweat, and toil, and ingenuity sunk deep into every bolthole. He wants to lift their accomplishments to the sun, say, look what my children have done, they are fucking brilliant, and they’ve probably saved your sorry asses more than once.

He makes sure to go about the manor as Bletchley Park slowly closes down, giving each man and woman a firm handshake.


End file.
